The Dread Shop

Attached two-bay four-storey house over basement, built c.1740, now in use as offices. Flat roof hidden behind rebuilt brick parapet with masonry cornice, projecting chimneystack to rear (west) elevation. Brown brick walls, laid in Flemish bond, over masonry plinth course and smooth rendered wall to basement area. Square-headed window openings having granite sills and timber casement windows to upper floors. Masonry block-and-start lugged surrounds and entablatures, bracketed granite sills and one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows to ground floor. Square-headed openings to basement area, blocked. Round-headed door opening having cut granite block-and-start surround, granite cornice, spoked fanlight, limestone steps and timber panelled door. Situated to north end and west side of Anglesea Street.

This building, along with those adjoining to the south, is among some of the oldest remaining buildings in Temple Bar. Anglesea Street was largely developed by the mid-eighteenth century and appears on John Rocque’s 1756 map of Dublin. The projecting chimneystack and ground floor window treatments are suggestive of a mid-eighteenth-century date. The well-executed block-and-start door surround, of a type popularized by James Gibbs (1682-1754), contains an unusual timber door with cross panels. It is recorded as a house, office and yard in Griffith’s Primary Valuation and as a dwelling and offices in the 1911 census. Its scale and proportions are in keeping with the small collection of eighteenth-century buildings in Temple Bar and helps to chart the early architectural development and history of the area.